Conservation of Indigenous Livestock : Sustaining Biodiversity for Current and Future Generations

This report, presented by Roger Blench, Managing Director of Mallam Dendo Ltd, UK, considers some of the current challenges involved in the conservation of indigenous livestock. The importance of livestock biodiversity in reducing the risks faced by manyu poor rural households is described in the context of accelerating erosion of livestock diversity. The role of science in identifying genetic resources and the implications of emerging techniques for science based policy are also discussed. The need for coherent policies on livestock is highlighted focusing on a framework that allows input from evolving science, the implementation of the Convention of Biodiversity, regional policies, and a re-orientation of research and extension towards species and uses relevant to poor people. This report was discussed during the Stakeholder meeting at AGM2005

Final Records of the Sambe Language of Central Nigeria: Phonology, noun morphology, and wordlist

This paper presents all the available data on the Sambe language [xab], formerly spoken in a remote area of Central Nigeria. Two field trips were made, in 2001 and 2005, and a substantial wordlist was collected. By 2005, the two remaining informants were very old and it is presumed Sambe is no longer spoken. The speakers still retain their ethnic identity but today speak a dialect of Ninzo. Sambe is part of the little-known Alumic group of languages and its closest relative is Hasha. Alumic in turn is one subgroup of Plateau, itself a branch of Benue-Congo and thus part of Niger-Congo. Sambe has an extremely rich phonological inventory. Fossil prefixes show that it had a system of nominal affixing until recently, but this had become unproductive by the time the language was recorded.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

L'homme et l'animal dans le bassin du lac Tchad

Une appréciation personnelle est donnée du recensement national du bétail qui a été effectué au Nigéria de 1989 jusqu'au milieu de l'année 1991. Ce recensement, dans lequel l'auteur était responsable des enquêtes au sol, a été conçu comme un exercice technique et statistique, mais il comportait de fortes implications politiques. Pour toutes les catégories de bétail, l'examen des effectifs et des systèmes de production a porté sur la totalité du pays. On résume les diverses méthodes utilisées et les principaux résultats chiffrés. Puis, les problèmes rencontrés pour obtenir des données numériques fiables sont évoqués, ainsi que les raisons de cette situation. Le rapport final a été mal accueilli par le gouvernement nigérien, en partie parce que ses résultats contredisaient les statistiques officielles utilisées dans la répartition des crédits. De ce fait, ce recensement n'as pas été utilisé dans l'élaboration de projets de développement pour l'élevage. (Résumé d'auteur

Were the first Bantu speakers south of the rainforest farmers? A first assessment of the linguistic evidence

Popular belief has it that the Bantu Expansion was a farming/language dispersal. However, there is neither conclusive archaeological nor linguistic evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, especially not for the initial spread in West-Central Africa. In this chapter we consider lexical reconstructions for both domesticated and wild plants in Proto-West-Coastal Bantu associated with the first Bantu speech communities south of the rainforest about 2500 years ago. The possibility to reconstruct terms for five different crops, i.e. pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), okra (Hibiscus/Abelmoschus esculentus), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) and plantain (Musa spp.), indicates that by that time Bantu speakers did know how to cultivate plants. At the same time, they still strongly depended on the plant resources that could be collected in their natural environment, as is evidenced by a preliminary assessment of reconstructible names for wild plants. Agriculture in Central Africa was indeed “a slow revolution”, as the late Jan Vansina once proposed, and certainly not the principal motor behind the early Bantu Expansion

Gender equality, resilience to climate change, and the design of livestock projects for rural livelihoods

Currently, there is growing interest in how livestock projects can contribute to resilience to the effects of climate change. In this article we recommend a shift away from gross productivity to sustainability, via the use of thrifty local breeds, with an additional emphasis on improving survival of young animals. These animals, due to their local adaptations, are more likely to be resilient to climate change. There is a gender dimension to these proposals, since smaller animals and local breeds are more likely to be perceived by communities as suitable for husbandry by women. We recommend a re-orientation towards an explicit gender-equality focus for these projects

FROM VIETNAMESE LITHOPHONES TO BALINESE GAMELANS: A HISTORY OF TUNED PERCUSSION IN THE INDO-PACIFIC REGION

Southeast Asia and adjacent regions are part of a general area defined musically by ensembles of tuned percussion instruments played in a heterophonic style. It has been argued that there is some link between African and Southeast Asian xylophones, but this is almost certainly erroneous. Tuned percussion instruments are bounded by India in the west, Laos in the North and China in the east, spreading down into island Indonesia but stopping short of Melanesia. The instruments used in these ensembles vary greatly, although wooden and metal xylophones are the most common. However, tuned stones, bronze vessels (bell, gongs etc.), struck hanging bamboo tubes and others have all been adapted to the same principle. Some of these instruments leave more archaeological traces than others; tuned stones (notably Chinese lithophones) have a high profile archaeologically, along with bronze bells, which may over-emphasise their importance in relation to wooden and bamboo instruments. This type of music is now of vanishingly low importance in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea but dominant in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, suggesting that over time, the centre of gravity of the style has shifted and become elaborated, as well as spreading to new instrument types. The paper presents evidence for the current distribution together with the limited evidence from excavation and historical documents and discusses the type of archaeological finds that might be relevant to enriching current models

Away with the fairies: how old is human oral culture?

This essay is intended to suggest that oral cultures show deep connections so specific that it is hard imagine they are coincidence or convergence. If so, then they can provide us with important insights into the out- look of these early modern humans. Folklore is a much-despised genre in modern academia. It is considered antiquarian, sentimental and only suitable for mining by Disney films, thus hardly a serious academic discipline. Folklore narratives tend to be local, low-circulation publications often unaccompanied by analysis and often aimed at younger readers. However, considered more carefully in comparison with synchronic ethnographic data, they points to connections hard to explain without appealing to deep time hypotheses